In October and November last year, ‘er indoors and I travelled to Japan. We stayed in Tokyo, Kyoto and Kanazawa, and travelled to Hiroshima too. It was an absolutely fascinating trip, during which most of my preconceptions about the country were challenged, and I felt that I learned a lot, but also that there was… Continue reading Big in Japan 1
Spy novels have a long pedigree in English. Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907) can probably be counted the first in the genre. Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands, published four years earlier, is really a thriller, establishing the John Buchan style: plucky Brit gentleman adventurer foils dastardly plot by fiendish foreigners, a template… Continue reading Free Agent
I am very grateful to my friend and former colleague Kym for the gift of this brilliant book. Robert Macfarlane is one of those sickeningly talented renaissance men, who can, in his case, maintain a high-profile academic career at Cambridge, and produce a series of startlingly original books, while filling in his spare time with… Continue reading A Word Hoard
My review of A.David Moody’s final volume in his massive Ezra Pound biography is now up at Shiny New Books.
For reasons over which we will draw a discreet veil, our soundtrack on a recent long drive was a CD of early Perry Como songs. The opening track, called ‘Dig You Later’ was a topical song of 1945, in which Perry and a vocal group, The Satisfiers, sing a lyric which tries to shoehorn as… Continue reading Hubba Hubba!
My review of this book appeared here recently. I’ve now amended it slightly for publication on Shiny New Books. You will find it here.
My latest review at the excellent Shiny New Books is now up. Go here for my thoughts on the latest volume of A David Moody’s magnum opus on old Stetson.
It used to be that ‘showing respect’ was something children were supposed to do to adults, or farm tenants to the inhabitants of the big house. In recent times, it’s become a catch-all phrase beloved of gangsters, sportsmen and bullies. Not ‘showing respect’ can mean anything from looking at someone in a bar in a… Continue reading Respect
Man and boy, I’ve seen a lot of Hamlets, and I’ve taught the play more times than I can remember. So I know it very well, probably as well as I know any work of art. What to expect then, from Maxine Peake’s Hamlet, given at the Royal Exchange this autumn? That la Peake is… Continue reading Maxine Peake’s Hamlet at the Royal Exchange
To Paris, for the annual Ford Madox Ford conference. As ever, the Fordies proved to be a congenial and collegial bunch, and the conference was a friendly and relaxed exchange of ideas. Also as ever, some of the really major Fordians were present, including the estimable Max Saunders and Joe Wiesenfarth, both of whom delivered,… Continue reading Ford in Paris